Neocons have destroyed academic freedom

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Watch the interview at Press TV
Watch the interview at Press TV

By Kevin Barrett, VT Editor

The once-vibrant American academy is becoming a vast wasteland. All across America, professors are being intimidated, harassed, or even fired for seeking and speaking the truth about controversial issues…or even showing minimal common sense.

I know this from direct experience. In 2006, I was robbed of more than two million dollars in projected lifetime earnings by members of the Wisconsin State Legislature, who witch-hunted me out of the University of Wisconsin because they didn’t like the views I had expressed on a radio show. Behind the Grand Inquisitor, State Rep. Steve Nass, stood Lynn Cheney of ACTA and (presumably) Karl Rove, who had ordered “pushback” against the then-snowballing Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

The latest academic lynching victim is Larycia Hawkins. Her crime? Sympathizing with oppressed Muslims at a time when they are being murdered by the millions with the blessings of the US government and academy.



Apparently Hawkins was forced out of Wheaton Colleges for saying that “Muslims and Christians worship the same God.” But only a lunatic would question that statement. Obviously all universal monotheists worship the same God—but take different approaches, as illustrated by Rumi’s parable of the blind men and the elephant. Apparently the authorities at Wheaton College are so sure that the elephant is a rope, or a tree trunk, or a hose, or whatever, that their hearts are filled with hatred and disdain for anyone who may have grasped something different.

Of course, Hawkins’ real crime was taking a positive approach to Islam and Muslims. Today, murderous hatred of Islam is fast becoming obligatory. (I was forced out of the University of Wisconsin for discussing 9/11 in a way that could potentially interfere with the psychopathic rage against Islam that is now mandatory in mainstream America.)

But Islamophobia is not the only imposed fundamentalism in the neocon-policed American academy. Anyone who doesn’t evince a knee-jerk antipathy to whatever the authorities choose to call “conspiracy theories” can also be summarily fired. That is what happened to Professor James Tracy of Florida Atlantic University, who asked a lot of good questions about the Sandy Hook incident and was harassed and finally expelled for doing his civic duty.

Four university instructors who were witch-hunted out of their jobs are among the 27 leading public intellectuals featured in ANOTHER French False Flag? Now available in print and Kindle editions

Tracy is one of several professorial contributors to the new book ANOTHER French False Flag who have had their academic freedom summarily curtailed. Another is Henry Makow, who crossed swords with the feminist thought police at the University of Winnipeg…and was forced out of the university.

Another ANOTHER French False Flag contributor, Nick Kollerstrom, is a Ph.D. historian of science who was fired from his teaching job at University College London for publishing an article questioning the forensic evidence for the alleged Nazi gas chambers.

One of my favorite witch-hunted professors is Four Arrows, co-author of American Assassination: The Strange Death of Paul Wellstone. A tenured professor at Northern Arizona University, he was harassed right out of the university, and out of the country, for questioning 9/11.

The case that has gotten the most publicity in the past few years is that of Steven Salaita, who was hired at the University of Illinois, then fired for his tweets criticizing Israel’s massacres in Gaza…reminding many of what had happened a few years earlier to Norman Finkelstein, another target of Zionist wrath, at De Paul. But Salaita and Finkelstein had it easy compared to Sami al-Arian, whose Zionist superior at the University of South Florida had the connections to get him indicted and imprisoned on absurd “terror” charges for the crime of being an outspoken Palestinian.

The bottom line is that there is no more freedom of thought, inquiry or expression in the American academy. The Zionist-neocons have succeeded in turning America, and its institutions of higher learning, into a gigantic prison camp.

-KB

‘Neoconservatives take over US academic institutions’

-Press TV

Neoconservative Zionists have taken over US academic institutions and are promoting Islamophobia while pushing out professors who are sympathetic towards Islam and Muslims, an American scholar says.

“Unfortunately today, these neoconservatives whose philosophy is that intellectuals should be in the service of tyrants who rule using big lies and mass murder,” said Kevin Barrett, who has a Ph.D in Arab and Islamic studies and is one of America’s best-known critics of the so-called war on terror.

“They have taken over the academy and they don’t belong in the academy,” Barrett told Press TV on Monday. “Transparency and freedom are the ideals of the academy; because the neoconservatives reject these ideals, they have no business in the academy.”

On Saturday, an American female professor at a Christian university who got in trouble after wearing the hijab and saying Muslims and Christians worship the same God has agreed to leave the school.

Wheaton College, located near Chicago, Illinois, and political science professor Larycia Hawkins have reached a confidential agreement in which they will “part ways,” the college said in a statement.

“This seems to be a very strange kind of phenomenon that a professor should not be allowed to teach at a university,” said Barret, who himself was fired from the University of Wisconsin for accusing the US government of being involved in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“The whole idea is ludicrous but apparently not in Wheaton College, where Islamophobia appears to be mandatory,” he added. “Anyone who doesn’t hate Muslims with all their heart and soul apparently is not welcome to teach at Wheaton College.”

“It’s a disgrace and an outrage and travesty and anybody who cares about freedom in America should head straight to Chicago to protest, to go and occupy the offices of the administration [of Wheaton College] there.”

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